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James H. Woods, PhD; Gail Winger, PhD
University of Michigan Medical School Ann Arbor

Jonathan L. Katz, PhD
Addiction Research Center Baltimore, Md

JAMA. 1989;261(20):2956-2957.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In Reply.—

The letter from Lin et al and the article by their coworkers¹ to which they refer emphasize some of the points we made in our article on use and abuse of benzodiazepines. Their article¹ describes seven patients who demonstrated "addictive behavior" with respect to benzodiazepine use, as defined by the DSM-III (revised). Although insufficient data are presented to specify what types of behaviors these patients actually displayed, given the fact that six of the seven patients had histories of multiple drug abuse, it would not be surprising if they were to some extent psychologically dependent on alprazolam, as well as on the other drugs they were abusing. As we stated in our article, benzodiazepines pose a clear risk of abuse in people who are current or previous abusers of other psychoactive drugs.

The situation appears much the same for the 293 patients the correspondents have treated . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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